Overflows in the ocean occur when dense water flows down a continental slope into less dense ambient water. These density driven plumes occur naturally in various locations in the global ocean, but it is important to study idealized and small-scale models which allow for stronger confidence and control of parameters.

My group designed and built an experiment to mimic oceanic overflow while also configuring the MIT General Circulation Model on a Linux computer cluster to parallel compute numerical simulations. We then directly compared our experimental data with our numerical simulations using MATLAB for pre- and post-processing visualization.